I woke up grumpy.
Not simply aggravated, or even annoyed, but straight up grumpy.
The kind of grumpy that had me lying there in bed planning how I was gonna share the wealth with the first person I met. The kind of grumpy that had me building a catalog of slights and creating a corresponding menu of rebukes, so that I could be ready to express the mood no matter who the lucky target recipient was.
Yeah, that kind of grumpy.
Which is not like me. And, thankfully–thankfully, thankfully, thankfully–there was still enough of me present that I recognized that. And so rather than surrender to the momentum of these thoughts,
I called a pause… And I got curious.
Full disclosure, it wasn’t my most subtle or eloquent inquiry. I believe that I started at, “WTF? What is happening here? Seriously!”
But it was enough to halt the momentum.
And give me space to breathe.
And–gradually–feel my way into better questions:
Why on earth are you being so nasty first thing in the morning?
What has you so upset?
Are you still tired? Hungry? Thirsty?
You do know what will happen if you say that, right?
Why would you want to say such a thing to him?
Seriously, darling, what is going on here…?
Eventually, it came out: my feelings were hurt and I was in the reflexive response zone. And my feelings were hurt because there had been low attendance at the event I hosted the day before.
Ah, that makes perfect sense! People let you down, you’re hurt, you reflexively want to hurt in return.
And now, instead, you get to decide what to do with/about that hurt.
My first instinct was to turn to my journal.
I was very aware of the possibility that this journaling session could degenerate into a bitch session, so I made myself start with gratitude. Now, I know that forced gratitude journaling isn’t quite in keeping with the spirit of the thing, but it was important that I find at least three things that had gone right–essential really. I probably wouldn’t have been able to articulate it then, but it’s crystal clear in retrospect. Starting with something, anything, good-feeling would create a space that allowed for honesty while also pointing me towards constructive Possibility.
Turns out that many things had gone right–nine to be precise. Numbers one and two definitely felt forced, but by the time I got to number three I was on a roll. And by the time I got to number nine, I could definitely feel that my momentum was shifting. And I felt much more ready to explore the question at hand.
Still cautious of my tone, I framed the journal entry as a debrief of the experience–that is literally the phrase that I started the entry with. And then I just let myself write…
The results caught me off guard…and then surprised the heck out of me!
I was caught off guard by the fact that I had several constructive suggestions for myself: a promotion that could have generated more buzz; to what extent timing probably played an issue; and even some inspiration based on a few unexpected participants.
I was surprised, when I found myself writing this:
If I had done my 100% for the event and folks had bailed, then I could’ve surrendered the outcome to having done my best. But having been unable to give it my all, there’s the nagging sense that I could have done more and had a different outcome.
I wrote it. Then I read it. And then I realized, I wasn’t experiencing hurt feelings, I was experiencing Guilt.
My working definition of the word guilt draws liberally on the work of Karla Maclaren and Brene Brown. These two brilliant feelers and thinkers have taught me that guilt is the feeling that arises when my behavior is out of alignment. Out of alignment with my values, my priorities, my commitments, my Joy, my Truth. Guilt is my signal that I’m moving through the world in a way that doesn’t sync up with my Inner Wisdom.
In this case, I had planned an event with the best of intentions but work and schedules had intervened, leaving me with minimal bandwidth to nurture it. So, it wasn’t that people had let me down, I had let me down. Ohhhh…
Now for the coolest, potentially trickiest, part: owning my guilt without letting it own me.
If I had let my guilt own me, I would have been on an express train to the land of self-recrimination. Why do I always do this? I should have found the time; I should have made the time! Why didn’t I plan better? Blah, blah, blah… You all know the script and you all know how icky that script feels in your chest and how it solidifies the weight pressing into your shoulders. You can come back from that, but it takes quite a bit of effort, so let’s just not go there.
In this case, the process of inquiry that revealed the guilt to me was also the process of sitting with and owning it. Cool, huh? By listing specific things that I could have done differently–that I fervently wished I had done differently–and starting to think through how I will actually do things differently next time, I was simultaneously
1) acknowledging that my behavior felt out of alignment to me
2) acknowledging its consequences, and
3) exploring what both had to teach me about how to be more aligned, more in the Flow, more true to my Self on the next go-round.
Oh, and I was also forgiving myself. Not letting myself off the hook, but definitely giving myself credit for having done my best under the circumstances. It got done. And it was a solid first step. And I’m gonna own that too.
So, I ask you, do have any opportunities to come back into alignment today? And how will you lovingly create the space in which you can do so?
Fierce Whisper 